Revamp awaits your comments

[Brian]

There's a paradigm shift going on here, I'm not saying abandon text and photos, I'm saying it works better when it's ancillary to video. Web 3.0 is coming and it's precisely this shift from static to dynamic web content.

I completely agree with this statement, but it's harder to implement effectively than it sounds. I have yet to see any video promo for any property anywhere in the world where I could honestly say, "I wish I had done that".

Finally another visionary!!!!

Dude, check my site in about 2 months, I promise you it'll be something worth looking at. I've actually had many compliments from the video currently on my site, however, very little went in to it. I'm not in Asia right now so I'll I had for images were some stills shot with a $99 digicam. My hostess? Yes, she's beautiful and sexy, but I only had her for two hours and some may have noticed, she is NOT in the Philippines, she's talking to you from Half Moon bay in California. The wind was gusting at about 40 knots which turned the shoot into chaos. But I'll be in Asia in June and will do this video properly. There will be lighting, glamour shots, camera moves, food shots, gonna hit it out of the park. Stay tuned!

[enid]

Sorry I have not been able to keep up with this thread over the last few days as I have been away!

Video is a useful tool, there's no doubt, but should be ancillary to great still photography and text in my view, and not the converse

I would like a video on my site but I agree it would have to be very professional - the one on your site is certainly that Brian but I just would never have got as far as the video if I wasn't drawn in by text and photos and style. Also if I could afford to have a professional video I would not have an actor or actress I would have us. We are very much a part of the holiday experience here as this is our home too.

All that being said this post was asking for reviews about my site and I am happy with it so far. Thank you everyone for your detailed feedback - not nit picking at all Brooke - just what I needed to help me get to to its final point. I have collated all your points to share with my daughter who does the style bit and when she has a block of time over Easter we'll be having a good look at it. Meanwhile I'll get on and do that When to Come page!

[Stu]

Brian - just as a minor point. 'copyright' isn't spelt 'copywrite'. I'm not sure you'd be able to save yourself in a 'copywrite' case against you.

[KathyG]

Enid,
Just tried to have a look at your site but I don't seem to be seeing the same as everyone else....! Is this the old one that's there at the moment?

Brooke, I would just love you to 'nit-pick' my site too, it's in desperate need - but I need to do some updating to it first!

[enid]

The old one's orange the new one's green - teh old one still rules I'm afraid. here's the new site again

http://peyrenegre.net/_newsite/

[catherinedonegal]

hi enid

your site and properties are beautiful.

just a couple of things i noticed.

1. the search facility at the top right doesn't work with lots of words (bedrooms etc) which i might have typed in were i looking for a rental.

2. you have the type changing to italics (extensive grounds and BBQ for instance):

There are extensive grounds with mature trees and flower gardens
Cook your local ingredients on the BBQ

i would automatically think that clicking these words in italics would take me to further info or a pic of the grounds or the BBQ but they are not clickable so a bit frustrating because they enticed me to click and i couldn't. i think i have been on the net too long

but overall it is lovely and very easy to negotiate around.

catherine

ps - forgot to say, the pic on the opening page to the left of the bedroom pic is not showing for me.

[enid]

Thanks Catherine - very useful tips - it isn't my published version - very much a work in progress but the comments are helping me tighten it up. The picture on the first page had got lost in my efforts to follow previous comments to add captions ( I am teaching myself how to do these things as I go along!!!!!)

(I should be working on teh web site now but i have two Australians form Helpx staying at the moment and want to use their young energy to finish some painting jobs)

[catherinedonegal]

you're welcome enid. i can't actually build a site but i do have a website (on our area) and my son does all the loading stuff but slowly i am learning to potter around the html stuff. i know that posting pics (and the other stuff) that you must have the code exactly right ie no extra spaces either side of the code fir instance coz that is what sends the pic off somewhere not on your page.

i am working on a page for my house site and it's great fun pottering around namo adding and taking away things and then checking if i've managed to do what i intended.

[Holiday Ray]

Hi Enid,
I'll throw my hat into the ring, for what it's worth (As opposed to laying it )
You've had so much advice and so many suggestions that your head must be spinning. The good thing is that the members of this site, your friends, are so knowledgeable that you only need to decide which pearls of wisdom to take on board. I can't wait to see the progress of your site, it's already excellent and armed with all those new ideas, I know it's going to turn out just brilliantly.
All the techy stuff has been mentioned and most of it is beyond me anyway, so I'm not even going to go there.
My thoughts !
Your Home page is the kind I like. Bright and colourful with Lots of links for more info, but not overcrowded.
I, like many others, do not like to see adverts everywhere, so it's good to see you've stayed clear of those.
The layout has already been discussed in terms of alignment, by others, so I'll leave that alone.
I also subscribe to the "large photo" to really sell the place, school of thought.
With regards to the external photo of Peyrenegre on the left hand side of the home page, do you have a photo of the same view, but with the sun on the front of the property ? As it is a beautiful stone building, I think that if you waited for the sun to come round to the front, you may improve the photo by allowing the lovely hews of the stonework to be highlited better. And a larger photo would draw the viewer in to the house more. It already looks very inviting.

Aquitaine
I was a bit confused by this button. On pressing it, I expected to be told about the wonders of the region, but instead was given a further description of the property ? Is this something to do with SEO ?

Facilities and services
"What can we do to make your Holiday run more smoothly"
Love it !
Thats exactly what customers want to hear, What YOU, are going to be doing for THEM. Well done Enid, very welcoming.

It was suggested earlier in the thread that the "Gallery" button was a bit obscure to find. Even having read that, it still took me a little while to find it on the homepage. I agree that one of, if not the first things that people want to know, when visiting a site, is "where are all the photos ?" So perhaps consideration could be given to moving the button to make it more prominent ?

Booking form
May I suggest that you consider adding a little colour to the background of your pricing table, so that it is differentiated from the white background of the page. Just a thought !

Overall I think the content is really very good indeed and the site is well thought out.

Keep up the good work, you're doing a fantastic job Enid

Ray

[enid]

Aw thanks Ray . I have 'gone live' now still with lots of faults but it's still better than the old one. I'll be working on it over the next few days (but not tomorrow as I'm going out for lunch- hurrah!).

Very helpful comments - thanks again.

[Chambo]

Hi Enid,
I just had another look at your site and it really looks beautiful - I love that shade of green! Some of the photos on there are fantastic, I particularly liked the one of the dining room (?) on the 'les etables' page. It looked really inviting.

Lots of inspiration there for others!

[enid]

The three central images are too wide by about 20 pixels, so that they overlap the article links on the right side.

I'd like to follow uo this comment from Vrooje - but how!!!???? What do I do??????

[la vache!]

Haven't you got a photo editor piece of software? You can resize there then save them to your public_html file. Or depending which website editor you use, you maybe able to do it there.

[marcus]

Enid,

Don't forget to do a 301 redirect on all the old pages otherwise people finding them through search engines (which they will for quite a while) will all get error messages.

something like

<?
Header( "HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently" );
Header( "Location: http://www.peyrenegre.net" );
?>

instead of the current content of the pages should work if your old pages were .php

your /newsite pages have been indexed in google so they need to be redirected as well, otherwise G are going to think you have duplicate copies of all the pages, and they will probably show people the 'original' version (in the 'newsite' directory) which also return error pages...

[vrooje]

Hi Enid,

You can manually edit the HTML here:

Code: Select all

<table border="0">
<tbody><tr>
<td><a href="http&#58;//farm2.static.flickr.com/1219/1067504033_d9295f197c.jpg" title="Peyrenègre is situated on a hill surrounded by wheat and sunflower fields - there are panaoramic views to the village of St Barthèlèmy" rel="lightbox"><img src="http&#58;//farm2.static.flickr.com/1219/1067504033_d9295f197c_m.jpg" align="middle" height="160" width="200"></a></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><a href="http&#58;//farm1.static.flickr.com/133/343037465_fe66643b36_o.jpg" title="&#65533;Looking our over the sunflowers from the gites" rel="lightbox"><img src="http&#58;//farm1.static.flickr.com/133/343037465_fe66643b36_m.jpg" align="middle" height="160" width="200"></a></td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td><a href="http&#58;//farm1.static.flickr.com/133/343039307_c47e9a5956_o.jpg" title="&#65533;The wheat harvest" rel="lightbox"><img src="http&#58;//farm1.static.flickr.com/133/343039307_c47e9a5956_m.jpg" align="middle" height="160" width="200"></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center">The house on the hill</td>

<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td align="center">Across the sunflowers</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td align="center">The wheat harvest</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>

In each of the image tags, the height and width is specified. You can simply change the specified width in the code, and either change the height proportionally or just remove the height altogether and let the browser determine the proportional height.

It's better to also re-size the images themselves, but from a display perspective, just changing the code will work fine.